The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', adopted Christianity from the ByzantineEmpire in 988,Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated as a state, finally succumbing to Mongolinvaders in the 1230sDuring this time a number of regional magnates, in particular Novgorod and Pskov,fought to inherit the cultural and political legacy of Kievan Rus'.After the 13th century, Moscow gradually came to dominate the former culturalcenter.By the 18th century, the Grand Duchy of Moscow had become the huge Russian Empire,stretching from Poland eastward to the Pacific Ocean.Successive regimes of the 19th century responded to such pressures with acombination of halfhearted reform and repression.Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861, but its abolition was achieved on termsunfavorable to the peasants and served to increase revolutionary pressures.Between the abolition of serfdom and the beginning of World War I in 1914, theStolypin reforms, the constitution of 1906 and State Duma introduced notablechanges to the economy and politics of Russia, but the tsars were still notwilling to relinquish autocratic rule, or share their power.The Russian Revolution in 1917 was triggered by a combination of economicbreakdown, war weariness, and discontent with the autocratic system of government,and it first brought a coalition of liberals and moderate socialists to power,but their failed policies led to seizure of power by the Communist Bolsheviks onOctober 25.Between 1922 and 1991, the history of Russia is essentially the history of theSoviet Union,effectively an ideologically based empire which was roughly coterminous withRussia before the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.The approach to the building of socialism, however, varied over different periodsin Soviet history, from the mixed economy and diverse society and culture of the1920sto the command economy and repressions of the Stalin era to the "era ofstagnation" in the 1980s.From its first years, government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-partyrule of the Communists, as the Bolsheviks called themselves, beginning in March1918.However, by the late 1980s, with the weaknesses of its economic and politicalstructures becoming acute, the Communist leaders embarked on major reforms, whichled to the collapse of the Soviet Union.The history of the Russian Federation is brief,dating back only to the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991.
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Thank you, this helped. Any chance you could help me with finding information on Stolypins reforms? Thank you, please pm :)